the rent served as interest on the $400 he had granted. This kind of double contract would become an increasingly common method of generating credit in East Africa, especially when paired with a redeemable sale, in which the original owner could buy back the property after a fixed period of time. These deals financed the ivory and clove trades for people of varying social classes. An understanding of these debt arrangements and the mobility they engendered can be achieved through close study of Arabic business documents in Zanzibar.
AN ARCHIVE OF TRANSACTIONS
Business deeds fill several volumes within the Zanzibar archives, and they detail more than two thousand transactions that span the nineteenth century. The languages of these documents reflect underlying commercial forms and Indian processes: the vast majority of them were written in Arabic; a substantial number are in Gujarati; and a much smaller number are in English. Although some deeds describe partnerships or the settling of estates, most directly relate to the flow of cash and credit. These documents clarify the terms of sales and the conditions under which creditors supplied money. They describe the security or collateral involved (if any) and specify the terms and time frame of repayment. The length of these documents varies from a few lines of text to several pages of subclauses. The collection, as a whole, offers a portrait of the interconnected world of the Indian Ocean. While most of the documents were written in Zanzibar, they implicate property and people who traveled far across the ocean and into the interiors of Africa and Arabia.
“Said bin ‘Umar bin Muhammad bin Salim al-Kharūsi acknowledged that he owes Wala bin Banji al-Hindi one hundred frasila and twenty frasila pure ivory in the measurement [weight] of Zanzibar frasila.” 41 So begins a typical contract written in Arabic, following the precepts of Islamic legal practice. Said bin ‘Umar, the borrower, stated his obligation to deliver ivory to Wala Banji, the creditor (and one of the agents of the customs master), within a period of one year, from the date of the contract, 10 Dhu al-Qa’da 1293 (November 26, 1876). This type of document is among the most common written Islamic agreements, an acknowledgment or iqrār, and this type is well-represented in the Zanzibar collection. These documents acknowledge a debt or obligation, and they take their name from the Arabic verb root q-r-r in its fourth form (
One of the most striking aspects of Islamic contract law, however, is that written agreements are not required for any transaction. Theoretically, a written contract is only valid after the oral testimonies of qualified witnesses verify its content.47 Thus, written agreements in Islamic commercial life have had an uneasy history. The Quran explicitly instructs people to write down their agreements and to make contracts: “Believers, when you contract a debt for a fixed period, put it in writing. Let a scribe write it down for you with fairness; no scribe should refuse to write as God has taught him. . . . So do not fail to put your debts in writing, be they small or big, together with the date of payment. This is more than just in the sight of God; it ensures accuracy in testifying and is the best way to remove all doubt.” 48 This injunction reflects the transactional relations and the commercial world of seventh-century Arabia, and it lays the groundwork for prohibiting two Islamic commercial practices: usury (riba in Arabic, which means an increase with an implication of illegal means, such as bribery, profiteering, and fraud) and speculation (gharar in Arabic, which means risk, hazard, or jeopardy).49
The Quranic injunction to write contracts notwithstanding, early Islamic legal theory emphasized the primacy of witnesses’ oral testimony and downplayed the role of documentary evidence.50 Oral testimony and the qualification of witnesses have been central to Islamic legal epistemology. Despite the tension between oral testimony and written documents, however, paper contracts have been fundamental to Islamic commercial practice from the earliest days.51 These contracts rested—much like oral agreements—on the testimony of witnesses. Thus, while written documents shadowed testimonial evidence, scholars and practitioners linked these by writing formularies and templates that only had to be witnessed to be valid.52
Signing formulae arose so that witnesses could state their acknowledgment of the agreement. And written documents increasingly followed boilerplate texts to avoid standard objections and pitfalls, while still remaining legally sound. Getting the details correct in such documents would guarantee that transactions were legal and rights were respected. In the case of property sales, for instance, deeds were required to list the owners of all adjoining properties, because these people had a right to preempt the sale under Islamic law. These forms and contracts were easily replicated with the formularies that allowed people to create contracts that met Islamic legal standards.53 Parties to these agreements wanted them to be legally impeccable, and formularies were especially important to non-Muslims who wanted to ensure the documents’ validity in Muslim courts.
Iqrār documents acknowledge rights (as in the right to collect a debt). Legal scholars consider the people making these declarations to be doing so unilaterally. Hence, these acknowledgments, if properly witnessed, are irrevocable. Any person making an iqrār must have reached the age of puberty and be of sound mind. Slaves could theoretically make iqrār, although there were some exceptions to this. If the declaration had been properly witnessed, the person who made it could not repudiate it, and only in a few cases did grounds exist to invalidate them. An iqrār written under duress was considered invalid, for instance, and each school of Islamic law has its own strict rules to determine the acceptability of iqrār created when the declarer is near death. Recognition of rights granted in an iqrār can be extinguished if the beneficiary of the acknowledgment refuses to accept the recognition.
The generic formula for iqrār includes the name of the person acknowledging the obligation, the beneficiary, the object of acknowledgment, the terms of payment, the date, and the signature of witnesses.54 The formula demands a degree of specificity to ensure the validity of the document and to avoid ambiguity. After the initial verb expressing intention, a clause identifies the declarant (al-muqirr, the acknowledger) and the person to whom the rights are given (al-muqarr lahu; the “acknowledged,” or the one to whom something is acknowledged).
In the example above, Said bin ‘Umar bin Muhammad bin Salim al-Kharūsi acknowledged his debt to Wala bin Banji al-Hindi. Manuals of instruction make clear that the names of both the declarant and the person “acknowledged” should include their personal names (Said and Wala, respectively); the names of their fathers (‘Umar and Banji); the names of their grandfathers (Muhammad, for the former); and the nisba (clan name or descriptive adjective: al-Kharūsi—of the Kharūsi clan—and al-Banyani—the Banyan) or laqab (nickname), which are further means of identifying individuals. This degree of specificity makes the documents in Zanzibar especially useful, because connections among members of the same families and clans can be made.
To return to the exchange in the Introduction, Juma Merikani was identified by his whole name, Juma bin Salim bin Mubarak bin Abdullah, which traces not only his patrilineal genealogy to the name of his great-grandfather, but also includes his clan name,
